Oh dear!  I hung my “towel” up to dry last night after washing my feet before bedtime, and this morning discovered it had been chewed up by some critter.  The critter ALSO chewed on the bite valve of my Platypus!  Fortunately the bite valve damage wasn’t too bad, and everything still works fine.  But my poor towel!

We continued to enjoy the beautiful views of the Trinity Alps today– the highest part, where the snow is still deep, even in August! But finally we “turned the corner” and the trail headed north again through Russian Wilderness, which I call “the land of huge light grey boulders.” Right away, the PCT takes you across the face of a cliff, with the trail blasted out of the rock.

I was much braver about this “cliff walk” than I was in 2005! But a really great thing was we met Babysteps and Flashback, who immediately recognized us– “Wow, 3rd Monty and White Beard! We haven’t seen you since Mather Pass! We climbed the pass on those fantastic steps you chopped in the snow!” They asked us where was a good place to eat in Etna, and we told them “Bob’s Ranch House.” They said, “See you there for breakfast!” and we answered “Well, we’re hoping for church first.”   Off they went, and we hiked on until 8pm, hoping to get as close to Etna Road as we could.

We set up our camp near a bend in the trail, and even after dark, we were being passed by hikers with headlamps!  Everybody is doing “Etna or  Bust!” 

Walk with Aragorn to Isengard: Ford the Snowbourne and reach the road to Edoras

Another tough day!  It took us from 5:30 am till 7:30 pm to do only 11.7 miles!  We were climbing over snow most of the day, which makes for slow going.  This morning, a short walk took us to the South Fork of the Kings River. The ranger note yesterday said, “do not cross here— way too dangerous. Walk upstream to where the trail crosses back over.”  Yup, the river was obviously quite deep and was a  roaring torrent all the  way across.   Bill was still determined to cross it, however.  I begged him not to, but PLEASE to just walk up the near side as the ranger had advised. To my great relief, Bill finally agreed to follow the ranger’s suggestion.

Turned out that the “bushwhack” up along the south side of the Kings was very pleasant and easy and pretty, too. It isn’t steep and has a nice open feel to it, so we could admire the magnificent Sierra scenery.  Not only that, but it was not wet or muddy, and there were no big tributaries to ford.  If we had bullied our way across the river down below and determinedly stuck to the PCT, we would have had several more nasty creek crossings.  We could see those tributaries coming in from where we were on the other side, and commented, “I sure am glad I don’t have to ford THAT!” 

It was a good thing that the first part of the hike up to Mather Pass was not very steep.  Bill is still not feeling well at all.   He still has to stop and rest a lot, and can’t eat much.  He decided to start taking Flagl to see if it would help.  Eventually we reached the PCT again, well up toward the pass, and simultaneously were  back into the snow and playing “Where’s the trail?” The snow turned out to be a great benefit in one way, though–we could cross creeks on snow bridges and not get our feet wet!   I love snow bridges!

In retrospect, though, I should have realized sooner that walking on miles of snow without protecting your lower face from sunburn is really dumb!  I was so absorbed in just dealing with being terrified half the time that I didn’t even notice I was developing a pretty bad sunburn.   Bill has a beard, so there’s no problem for him!

 We reached the foot of the pass (again, made very difficult by so much snow) and found quite a few other folks also heading up, more than we have seen on any of the other passes.  I could not believe that we’d caught up with so many of them after our slow going for the last couple of days.  Going up Mather is the steepest of all the passes, and very scary. Bill whizzed halfway up and sat there chatting with another hiker while I painstakingly “chopped in” every step I took with my faithful ice axe. I felt very bad about being so slow, and felt even worse when I got to the point where I could hear Bill and the other guy laughing–at ME!   “It is painful to watch, isn’t it?”  joked Bill, pointing at me, and the two of them thought it was very funny.  I know that guys like to give each other a bad time (it’s a guy thing, and normally I don’t care), but I was so scared and tired that it really hurt and I had to fight not to cry.  As soon as I got to the “breather spot”,  Bill took off again and I sat there feeling very low. 

Then a wonderful thing happened.   A young couple came happily climbing up the steps I had just chopped, with the wife rejoicing at how easy it had been for her “with these nice steps.”  She mentioned how worried she had been about the steep climb up Mather.   I didn’t pipe up with, “Well, you can thank me–I made those steps”,  but I was so blessed and encouraged!   I picked up my ice axe and tackled the next climb, feeling much more cheery! 

Woo-hoo!  I reached the top at last.  Going down the other side of Mather is not as steep or scary.  It involved a mix of scrambling over snow and rocks.  Bill is always way faster than I am on this type of terrain, even when he is not feeling good.  I have to be especially careful when scrambling on rocks.  I don’t have the world’s best sense of balance, plus the challenges of wearing bifocals (makes it hard to judge distance) and I have rather floppy ankles.  So on rocks, I’m very cautious!  

But finally we made it down to Palisade Lakes, which were still semi-frozen.  The ice was breaking up, though,and there were cute little “baby icebergs” floating in the water.  I wish I had a picture of them, but we’d had a very nasty stream crossing just above the lakes that looked dangerous enough that I’d wrapped the camera thoroughly in plastic bags and set it high up in Bill’s pack.  Once we got across (all went OK!), Bill took off and was way ahead of me, so I had no camera available.  Too bad–those really were totally cute little icebergs!

Then it was down the famous “Golden Staircase” with its huge rock steps. I yelped a little at each step down, because my poor knees were already so sore from all the snow and rock scrambling.  I LOVE my trek poles–what a help they are when my knees are tired!  And seeing the green grass and forests in the valley below was also encouraging.  In 2005,  I cried a bit on this stretch out of sheer frustration at being so slow on the huge rock steps and rough trail.   I cried a little bit this time, too, for the same reason.  But those green meadows and trees were getting closer and closer!   I felt like I was “coming in for a landing” on an airplane!

 As soon as we were down in the valley, and back into nice dry forest,  we stopped and camped, completely wiped out.   It was 7:30 pm.  When we were doing our best to clean up before getting into our sleeping bags, Bill and I both discovered that we have a rash on our lower legs.  What could it be?  Sunburn-related?   Just being constantly wet?  At any rate, it does sting a bit.  I also realized, duuuuh! that I had a very bad sunburn on my lower face.   Tomorrow I will wear my black mosquito headnet when we come to snow.  That should help!  

Walk to Lórien: Reach the Guardroom junction in Moria

Had a solid night’s sleep, which really helped me today. I felt 100% better!  Bill was also feeling perky and was talking about “maybe we can get over both Pinchot and Mather passes today!” (I thought, “I’ll settle for just Pinchot!”)   The mosquitoes came to see us off as we packed up and headed for the “little Golden Gate Bridge” over Woods Creek.  The creek was a roaring torrent of white water–I sure am glad for the bridge!  It’s a suspension bridge that will take one person crossing at a time.  I went first.  The bridge sways every time you take a step, and for me, it’s a bit scary.  But I made it almost all the way across (only about 20 feet left to go) when Bill thought I was done, and bounded on to the bridge.  Yikes!   The whole bridge started bucking and heaving up and down.  I was terrified, but too scared to turn around and yell at Bill to stop.  So I kept going, but man, was I glad to reach solid ground!

But the walk up toward Pinchot Pass along the creek was beautiful, and I soon felt very much consoled by the wildflowers along the trail, and the beauty of Woods Creek as it rushed and roared and cascaded and leaped in foaming whitewater torrents over the boulders in its path.  We also met some JMT  SOUTHbounders  Hooray!  That meant people are starting to make it through the snow and over the passes–there will be footprints to follow!

But suddenly, without warning,  Bill just “bonked.” He stopped hiking, took off his pack, lay flat down on the ground, and said, “I feel awful.” From that point on, he would not eat (“I feel sick”) and for the entire rest of the day, he  could only go a little way before stopping again.  I was worried.  Yesterday during the climb out of Vidette, I had to stop and rest a couple of times because I was so awfully tired, but I didn’t feel sick.  It soon became obvious that we would only make it over Pinchot Pass today, not Mather.

Soon the trail completely disappeared under the snow, and we spent at least two hours trying to head in more or less the right direction, based on Bill’s JMT experience.  Pinchot is a tricky pass to locate, and many early season hikers get lost trying to get there.  But Bill was watching for his favorite landmark, a rock formation he calls “Kilroy”, that’s located just to the left of the pass.  He spotted it, and we were headed for it, doing snow traverses and rock scrambles along the way, when we spotted two other hikers headed in the wrong direction.  We shouted and yelled and waved to them, trying to point out the right way to go, but they couldn’t hear us and eventually disappeared from sight.  We never saw them again.

Note from Alexa: Ack that sounds fairly ominous!

By lunchtime we were at the foot of the pass. Bill choked down a few bites, and drank Emer-gen-c with a liberal dose of GSE in it, while he studied the pass and strategized on a way up. Then it was time to put on the Microspikes, take ice axe in hand and climb straight up. This is still “terror time” for me, but I am getting better at it.  Near the top of the pass, amazingly, several switchbacks were snowfree, and we were able to just plain hike instead of climb.  But just short of the very top, it was steep snow again, and I went back to Microspikes and ice axe.  What a relief to finally be standing on top!  It was whoop ‘n holler time for me! 

Bill rested again, and planned a strategy for getting down.  There are several lakes below the north side of the pass (they were mostly frozen over and surrounded by snow) and that made it easier to see where to go.  At first we were able to follow snowfree switchbacks down the pass,  but then the snow took over again, and footprints headed along the snow, roughly following the path of the trail.  We decided to only “sort of” follow them, and shortcut whenever possible.  Our plan worked fine.  The farther down we went, the less snow, and the trail was playing hide ‘n seek, but we always managed to find it again.  We noticed that there was one set of footprints which seemed to be following the same basic strategy we were using, and that did save us a bit of time–at several points, when we were hesitating about which way to go, one of us would spot the footprints and cheer, “Look!  They went thataway!” and off we would go again. 

 When the snow thins, the creek crossings begin, and of course the trail itself (when visible) was a creekbed itself.  The outlet creek of Lake Marjorie was wide and a little deepish, but moving very slowly, so it was an easy crossing.  Whew!  After that came numerous smaller creeks that were rushing and roaring, but only knee deep.  I was able to cross them OK, and I am a lot less scared than I was a couple of days ago.  Practice helps! 

Finally we were happily switchbacking down a snowfree !!! trail into the Kings River Valley, when we came to a sign the rangers had put up.  “Please Read!” it said in large letters.  It warned that the next creek crossing was extremely fastmoving water, and would be much safer to cross on a log 300 yards upstream.  It also said that the next crossing (the Kings River) was very deep and fast and far too dangerous to attempt a crossing.  The rangers recommended that all hikers stay on the near side of the river and follow it up till the trail itelf crosses back over near Mather Pass.  Bill’s reaction was, “Humph!  The rangers are sissies!”

He then took off on a tear down the trail.  I couldn’t keep up with him!  So he arrived at “the next creek crossing”  and was standing there looking at it when I arrived.  It did look nasty–all white water, and yes, moving very fast.  I said, “Wow, we’d better go upstream to the log!”  Bill said, “No way.  This is do-able,”  and in he went.  I thought about going up to the log all by myself, but in the end, I watched Bill very carefully to see where the worst spots were .  I could see that the creek was never more than “just above the knee” deep, but oh man, was it roaring!   Scary!  Once Bill was safely across, I started in, praying like crazy with every step.  Basically what I do is say, “Lord, please guide my foot/trek pole”.  The rule of thumb in these crossings is to move one thing at a time–either one trek pole or one foot. 

About 2/3 of the way across, it started getting really hard for me.  Taller, heavier people have an advantage over us shorter, lighter people on these roaring crossings.  I yelled to Bill for help, and he came back into the creek to help steady me against the current as I finished the crossing.  Whew!  Then he said he was completely exhausted and wanted to camp NOW, even though it was only 6 pm.  I agreed, but asked if we could go just a bit farther on, to get away from the roar of the creek. 

And so we walked for a little while till we found a really nice camping spot between two big logs.  It was clouding over, so we rigged the tarp.  Bill went straight into his sleeping bag, but I did persuade him to drink a cup of Emergen-C with GSE added, and to take an Advil PM to help him sleep, since he said he didn’t sleep well last night, and that was part of his problem.  But he refused to eat anything else, saying “I’m too tired”, and went to sleep.  I was feeling pretty good, so I sat up for awhile eating supper and just enjoying the beauty of the woods.  What a relief to be out of the snow!  And no mosquitoes, either!   When I did go to bed, I took some time catching up on my journal notes.  I’ve only written one sentence a day till now, because I was so tired!

I am concerned about the Kings River crossing tomorrow.  All the hikers I know of always do as the ranger recommended and follow the river far upstream.  But Bill is being very stubborn about river crossings, and he does not feel well.  I decided that if the river looks too scary tomorrow morning, I will not attempt to cross it, but will meet Bill farther up the trail.   I hate doing this, but I am also very worried.

Walk to Lórien: Within Moria and Gollum begins following